This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away: ‘The Acolyte’ Trailer Aftermath and Other Highlights From A Huge Week In ‘Star Wars’ News
Happy Sunday, and welcome back to a packed edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away“. What a week! It’s like someone at Lucasfilm woke up and started hitting “Send” on all the pending press releases. We’ll be discussing all of it here, including the first trailer for The Acolyte.
A new episode of The Bad Batch came out this week, though it was probably buried underneath everything else going on; check out Sydney’s review here. In between covering all the major news of the week, I’ve spent my week watching Netflix’s 3 Body Problem (which I’ve enjoyed very much) and trying to get some progress done on my first playthrough of Jedi: Fallen Order. Gotta say, I’m not loving it as much as everyone else… I find it a bit frustrating for nooby gamers too.
And before we get started, did anyone else see that free Shrinking ad featuring Harrison Ford? Is this AI-generated or for real? I can’t tell anymore. Please, check it out here. You will not regret it.
Three Things That May Have Flown Casual
- For sale: Tickets are now available for May 3’s theatrical re-release of The Phantom Menace, which is now confirmed to be playing a special look at The Acolyte after the credits. But Disney/Lucasfilm didn’t stop there. They have announced that all nine Skywalker Saga movies will be available in theaters on May the Fourth, validating those rumors that spread on social media a few days ago (and which I’m on record not believing at all). Last but not least, they have also announced that tickets for Star Wars Celebration 2025 will go live on May 2, at 7pm ET, with a pre-sale available for 2023 VIP holders on May 1. If anyone has a spare VIP ticket, please get in touch!
- Publishing updates: We have a full comic preview for June now available. Dark Horse has also announced that Cavan Scott’s Tales from Vader’s Castle and its various sequel series will be brought together in an all-new collection later this year.
- Sad news: Dianne Crittenden, the casting director for the original Star Wars, passed away this week at 82. Our thoughts are with her friends and family.
Quote of the Week
“When Bob recently returned to the company during a difficult time, I was relieved. No one knows Disney better. I remain a significant shareholder because I have full faith and confidence in the power of Disney and Bob’s track record of driving long-term value.”
That was one of the highlights from George Lucas’ (hilarious) statement backing Disney CEO Bob Iger in a proxy fight against activist investor Nelson Peltz and his Trian Partners firm. For those who are behind on the topic, here’s the CliffsNotes version: Peltz, an 80-year-old Palm Beach billionaire is upset about the state of things at Disney and has been buying a lot of stock over the past year with hopes of rallying enough support to get into the board of the company. A vote will be made on April 3 during Disney’s annual shareholder meeting, and Iger is trying to fend him off.
So why is George Lucas important? I actually wasn’t aware of this, and I guess some people were unsure until recently, but he’s actually Disney’s largest individual shareholder. He was given 37.1M Disney shares back in 2012 when the Mouse House acquired Lucasfilm, which roughly equaled $2 billion back then. Today, Disney’s stock price is at $115 per share (as of Friday’s closing), which means that Lucas’ original deal is now valued at $4.3 billion. Whether he’s sold some of those shares or bought more along the way, we don’t know. (At its highest point in early 2021, Disney was trading at $190, which meant Lucas’ original stake in Disney was $7 billion.)
Whether George Lucas actually supports Disney and its CEO, especially given his ultra-blunt past statements, we don’t know for sure. I’m sure he was one of Iger’s first calls when the exec realized he’d need all the voting power he could get. Once Lucas picked up the phone and thought about it, which I’m sure took a while, he probably came to the conclusion that, whatever he thinks of Iger and the current state of things at Disney, it would be so much worse with someone like Peltz on the board, whose messaging has been “Disney is doing it all wrong” but hasn’t really given revolutionary solutions outside of being the anti-John Hammond: “Spare all expenses”.
The Acolyte Trailer Finally Arrived
It finally happened this week! The “Oh my God, it’s happening” gif from The Office was immediately posted and reposted on SWNN’s staff chat room after Lucasfilm dropped a bomb on us on Monday, with our first teaser poster for The Acolyte, the announcement of a June 4 release date, and the confirmation that the first trailer would hit on Tuesday. We’d known for weeks it was only a matter of time, and it even became a recurring segment in my opening paragraph of every Sunday’s “This Week, In a Galaxy Far Far Away” edition. (Lucasfilm also needed it: You know what nobody is talking about this week? Rogue Squadron.)
The trailer, a re-cut version of the promo that was shown to Star Wars Celebration audiences almost a year ago, arrived like a thunderstorm on Tuesday morning (US time). Besides the usual social media freak-out, Lucasfilm was more than ready for this and had been getting ready for a while. In addition to dropping the trailer, they revealed a load of information about the show, from character names and descriptions to the directors of the series.
Leslye Headland also did some press rounds on Monday where major outlets like Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, or Collider watched the trailer in advance and interviewed her about the show. It was mostly interesting stuff, and you can see some of the highlights here and here. I also put together a compilation of some of the biggest things we learned on that day here.
Lucasfilm announced on Wednesday it was their biggest trailer debut for any Disney Plus show (over 50M views in the first 24 hours), which honestly just seems like another marketing stunt to me. Is that a sign that more people are interested, or that Lucasfilm’s marketing team has done a better job than before getting it in front of everyone’s eyeballs? Probably a combination of both.
The video on the official Star Wars channel had 8M views by the time the announcement was made. From what I can remember from highly anticipated shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi or The Mandalorian season 3, the number of YouTube views immediately after release (which, if I recall correctly, ranges in the 6-8M) was not that different this time. TikTok is bigger than ever now, so have they figured out a way to crack that algorithm or are people reposting it more?
In terms of the trailer itself, I actually liked it a lot. (Check out Aled’s breakdown here.) Apparently, it’s received a lot of pushback on social media and in number of dislikes on YouTube. Some of it is kind of fair, like the fact that it doesn’t look as distinctive enough as perhaps some thought (not a huge turn-off for me yet; I care about original stories, I can get over not-so-original looks), and then there’s the usual woke nonsense. (Special shoutout to that guy who always replies to any Acolyte story on Twitter saying “from Harvey Weinstein’s assistant”!) There’s also the ridiculous notion that this negates The Phantom Menace‘s line about the Sith being gone for 1,000 years. Can’t we at least see the show first?
I never enjoy giving these comments any spotlight or time of day, but I guess it’s something that’s come up enough over the past few days to feel like it’s more than a tiny minority. My biggest takeaway is the fact that Amandla Stenberg is playing the villain, something I was a bit skeptical about after reading that original synopsis which seemed to paint her as a Jedi, or at least not pure Sith. Whether that was my misreading of it, or something else we don’t know about yet, I’m not sure. But that leads me to one of my main points.
What Are We Missing From The Acolyte Trailer?
I really believe Lucasfilm is planning to hide something big from The Acolyte‘s promo campaign. The behind-the-scenes buzz about it is pretty strong, and they probably think they have a winner in their hands — one they don’t have to show all their hands for. That kinda reminds me of two past marketing campaigns: The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Both of those hid the main element of the narrative, Grogu and young Leia, respectively, from the publicity.
Now, I don’t think Amandla Stenberg’s Mae will be tasked with taking care of three-year-old Sheev, but I do think we’re being deceived to some extent. Stenberg has said they had a “really, really heavy load” in the show and we know they are the protagonist; Leslye Headland had her conceptualized for the role from the very beginning. Judging from the trailer, however, Mae doesn’t seem to be more than a supporting character. We’ll probably learn a lot about her past with Jung-jae’s Master Sol, and though we know her intentions (killing Master Indara, played by Carrie-Anne Moss), we don’t know the reasoning behind them yet.
That leads to the question of who’s backing her. Always two there are. Is there any truth to those Keanu Reeves rumors? Though I would normally dismiss them as purely a fan pipedream, there’s just something about them that feels right here. Headland is a massive geek and has apparently made the show she’d like to watch. So I could see her reaching out to the actor. The question now becomes: Would Keanu do it? Carrie-Anne Moss being in it certainly doesn’t hurt. His IMDb, however, suggests he’s not a big TV person.
Whether it’s Keanu Reeves or someone else, Headland has to be holding on to a big one with Stenberg’s master. From what I can see (aside from Margarita Levieva, who apparently has a really small role in it) all of the announced and reported cast has been accounted for. There’s of course the possibility that they don’t show Mae’s master at all in the first season, and for the record, I don’t think that is the ace Lucasfilm is holding up their sleeve. I’m missing something about the show for now, but thankfully, we don’t have to wait that much longer to find out!
The Acolyte and the New Toy Order
The trailer wasn’t the only good news tied to The Acolyte this week. Hasbro announced a bunch of new Black Series figures being released this summer. Though we don’t know if that means it will come at the same time as the Disney Plus show, it’s certainly a much shorter window than the year-long wait we had with a lot of past live-action series and their figures. The days of going to the store to buy your favorite toy and bringing it into the theater to watch a new Star Wars movie seemed gone, but perhaps they can be back now.
The issue seemed to be with spoilers. But I feel like this was a good test run, as Hasbro revealed the looks of the characters 24 hours after Disney did, which meant the toy company was able to keep the secrets under lock and key and no leaks. Let’s try that again with Skeleton Crew, please, and if successful, let’s just keep on this strategy.
Not included in that toy lineup is Vernestra Rwoh, the character from the page that is making the jump to live-action with the show. She’s apparently the only High Republic publishing character to do so — at least on season 1. Headland did tease that more will come in subsequent seasons (which she said could happen really fast, though I have my doubts about that). If you’re not familiar with Vernestra Rwoh, Tyler did a nice YouTube short on her this week. Also, check out this week’s SWNN Live!, where Tyler, Nate, and Brian discussed the Acolyte trailer as well as the new Bad Batch episode.
What did you think of the latest edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away”? Let me know your thoughts and suggestions down below in the comment section. You can also send them, or reach out with any information tips, directly via our Contact page.
Have a great week!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
